They Call it Monkey Love
by Orson Zedd
Summary: Every son will ask his dad for advice on women, not every dad is Bowser. With a poorly informed decision and a heart of gold, he goes after the outfielder who stole his homerun baseball and his heart. Tiny Kong is upset that she can't seem to get a break in the big city. But every the optimist she tarries on until one day, these two worlds collide. 90 min. rated PG Adult themes


Since she was a little girl, and she had been a little girl, strange as that may seem now, all Tiny had wanted was to model. It hadn't happened. Models needed to be tall, and normally tall, not magically tall because your sister's boyfriend's grandfather made a potion to let you change size at will but normally regularly fashionably tall. But it'd be a few years since that wicked King K. Rool attempted to blow Donkey Kong Island off the face of the planet with his Blast-o-matic, and almost overnight Tiny blossomed into the graces of teenhood. Still, with a portfolio full of shots, she traipsed through treetops to the otherside of the island, the glorious shining metropolis of New Donk City.

Cranky Kong, the patriarch of the Island and oldest living Donkey Kong, ruler of the Island, said it like this, the first Donkey Kong who Donkey Kong Island was named after had built the city to be home to creatures and people of all nations, and truly it was still today. While most of the rest of the island was protected by various laws and regulations about wildlife management, New Donk City was an animal buddy of another species all its own. While the other apes could come and go as they pleased, only here could the naked ape roam unattended. "You should," Cranky said, "remember where your home is, here in the heart of the jungle. While you may never be King of the Jungle, should something happen, we may need you, and also, fashion? What cockamamie ape wears pants?"

Candy did, for one, and she was the most fashionable ape Tiny knew. Funky did too, and he was the coolest ape Tiny knew. Lanky also wore pants but also suspenders and no one cool wore suspenders, but two out of three was good enough.

Still she couldn't find anyone who would take her on. Days passed, then weeks and months. She helped Diddy and her sister stop an alien pig from turning a neighboring island into an amusement park, even though that sounded like wicked fun and also basically it already was an amusement park. Donkey Kong invited her and the entire family one day to a baseball stadium, somewhere so far away one had to crawl through the sewers of New Donk City to get there. It was rare that he ever brought more than Diddy or Dixie with him, and Dixie rarely so. She played basketball once and described the humans she played with as, "oddly proportioned, cartoonish". Cranky had some stories to tell about one of them, Mario. She was just a little girl when all it had happened, but it went something like this:

"I gave a lot of tax breaks to the Lakitu Bros. to film their big new movie in New Donk City, they even named it after me. It was this Kaiju movie about a misunderstood giant who kidnaps a woman because he doesn understand love. Anyway they got everyone, the gourgeous Pauline and the wonderful actor Larry Koopa! The day we filmed the climax, the Mario Brothers arrived in their plane having saved their kingdom from disaster, it was a gift from their regent, the wise and beautiful Peach Toadstool. Now these two jokers have been in a hole in the ground for eight years, no idea what's going on, no idea where they've been. In a fit of irony, they'd been living in New Donk City for part of it! No idea who I was though. So K. Rool tells them I'm actually kidnapping Pauline and Mario goes all Super Mario on me, chases me through the sets, gives me a concussion, kidnaps me, and Junior over there goes after me!"

Donkey Kong added, "I had some help from Diddy and Luigi to be honest. And Mario wasn't going to kill you or anything, just like, take you into the forest and let you go where you belonged."

"He was a resident of New Donk City for three years!" Cranky said, "I looked it up! He was a referee for the WVBA! I would know, I was at nearly ever game Little Mac was in. And somehow he missed the gorillas, chimpanzees, monkeys, gibbons, and orang-utans just loitering about, mixing with polite company?"

"Well, he did fly there the second time, these pipes will take you anywhere, probably didn't even think he was in the same place."

Cranky shrugged, it was a good point. Cranky wasn't much for those pipes. They were ancient, predated the written word, glyphs, and they were everywhere. People got lost in them, people died in them. Mario, his old enemy, was what the ancient peoples called a plumber, from the ancient Latin, plumbum or lead. But these pipes weren't lead. They weren't anything. The only thing which described them well was "green". Cranky had always found it curious that Donkey Kong Island was nearly devoid of them, save the few in the sewers below New Donk City. "Say did i ever tell you all that Donkey and Mario and Peach were all kidnapped as children?"

"Sorry Cranky, that pipe is straight ahead, no more long-winded trivia that leads to nothing later in the story!" and you know you've spoken too much when Swanky says so.

Whether or not Swanky was Donkey's brother, I couldn't possibly comment. In the Kong family, genetic relations aren't necessary. Tiny was not a chimpanzee like her sister Dixie. Diddy was not an ape like the rest of the family, and certainly wasn't his uncle Donkey's biological nephew. The only two people who anyone knew for sure were related were Donkey Kong and Cranky and, while Donkey was like a son to Cranky, he was, in fact, his grandson. No one really spoke of what happend to Donkey's father. Either Donkey didn't know, didn't care, or didn't want to talk about it, but in his younger days Cranky saw fit to make him his Donkey Kong Jr., the Kong vice-president, if presidents were kings, and kings were gorillas.

Donkey Kong was 30 now and had no heir apparent. It wasn't terribly important but some people in New Donk City were calling for him to name Diddy Kong his Donkey Kong Jr., which Diddy effectively was. Others were calling for him to finally marry Candy Kong and have a child, to which, Candy had responded, they weren't in a zoo, a fairly compelling point.

Travel through the pipes was strange. Time outside stops, but inside you're totally aware that you're there, speeding through space, breaking all sorts of rules that physics carefully set up for you, mostly to make sure that your atoms didn't fall apart or break down, or race towards the nearest magnet with gusto. Somehow you felt normal, you just couldn't move, and if you were a big guy like Donkey, you felt a little cramped. The pipes would bulge for you a bit, but only enough that you actually moved through, not enough to make you comfortable. It wasn't a private jet. But after both a while and no time at all, they arrived on Baseball Island.

Baseball is, for the uninitiated, a very dull and boring sport. It was created in the 19th century by the American Insomniac Institute, looking for a new and better way to induce sleep in patients. Princess Peach, in her infinite wisdom, had spent a sizable chunk of her country's treasury building an island with the sole express intention of playing baseball.

I can't detail the events of any of the games, however I will detail winners and losers, and then detail a loser. The Mario All-Stars beat the Bowser Monsters, the Donkey Kongs beat the Wario Diamonds, the Wario Diamonds beat the Bowser Monsters and despite having come in dead last, it was young master Bowser Jr. who insisted on staying and seeing the final game between the All-Stars and the Kongs.

"They say it's good for child development to allow them a bit of freedom," said Kamek, the attendant of both the Jr. Bowser and his senior.

"Yes, well, you basically gave in to my every whim and look how I turned out."

"I wasn't going to say that, sir."

"Oh but you were thinking it, Kamek. Are any of the Koopalings still here?"

"Oh, only a few. Ludwig stormed off immediately. Said something I couldn't understand because he's deaf and still won't use sign language, but he did use one hand gesture I did understand and won't repeat in front of the young master. Larry had an appearance on Mona Tonight, so he left with Wario's crew. Wendy's still here signing autographs for the minions, looks like that fashion forward initiative is really working out. Roy's on the sound stage talking shop. Morton is over there talking to a Whomp probably about work, because castles don't build themselves and with your track record we'll go bankrupt before we run out of castles. Iggy and Lemmy are with Jr. talking to him about something."

"Talking to him about what?"

"I don't know sir, I'm 490 years old, I can't hear as well as I used to before you started yelling at me all the time."

"WELL FIND OUT."

"I don't know Iggy, what if I say the wrong thing?" said Bowser Jr.

"I wouldn't worry about being in the wrong. How many times have we stopped even one of the Mario Brothers?"

"Luigi about a half dozen times, Mario three times?" Jr. answered

"What he's trying to say is be yourself." said Lemmy, "You can't be false to any man. If you're not honest, no matter how much she likes your façade, she won't really like you."

With only moments to respond, Iggy noticed Mario had hit the baseball, and it was heading directly for them, for Tiny the outfielder, who Bowser Jr. had positioned himself to ogle. It had to have been Mario's uncatchable fire swing, and with loaded bases, surely this would be curtains for the Donkey Kongs.

For reasons no being alive knows Bowser Jr. had actually been paying attention to the stakes and knew how important this would be. As the ball headed for the stands, he grabbed it, and lobbed it towards the outfielder, who threw it infield with enough time to out two runners and save their lead. Tiny blew the tortoise a kiss before returning to her game, and Bowser Jr. fell back and fainted from the blood rushing to his head.

It was the next day, perhaps the day after, that his father, the great king of the koopas Bowser Koopa had the talk.

"When a man loves a woman very much he kidnaps her and takes her to his castle," he said.

Bowser Jr, the recepient of this particular talk, had never heard about how love worked. he didn't have a mother, and most of the time when his mother surrogate Peach was around, he was fighting Mario to make sure he couldn't take her back. It was odd that he never pressed about the identity of his mother. Perhaps he was worried it was an old Japanese man. Perhaps he didn't understand how biology actually worked. Whatever the case was, the lesson he'd been given was now how he understood the complex dance of relationships to work, from the subtle nuances of understanding one another's cues to the growth and development of bonds and likes and dislikes.

Bowser Jr.'s Fiery Flotilla was launched to retrieve Tiny Kong from her home on the other side of the planet. The trip wasn't quite as daunting as that, many might magikoopas could move airships from one location to another in an instant using their dark powers. One day, if he trained hard, Bowser Jr. would be able to do most of it himself like his father could. It was part of the reason Bowser was the king of the koopas. His family's magic was the strongest. With it one could move worlds, conquer planets, change the nature of reality, and cheat death.

It was anyone's guess why Bowser was so preoccupied with princess Peach. There was one theory written in Luigi's secret journal that Bowser literally had nothing better to do. That kidnapping her was as close to love with her as he may ever come and that fighting Mario and him was the spice of life. The real answer was known to but one individual outside the race of shamans.

Many decades ago, Kamek himself had risked life and limb to find the secret of ultimate power. It was written that once, now 30 years ago, seven children would be born with remarkable powers imbued in them by the Power of the Stars. Kamek had been found out and marked before he could learn the identities of any of the Star Children and, in the interveining years he'd learned the identities of only two: Bowser and Peach and quite by accident. Bowser could never be killed permanently and Peach had the power to undo any of Bowser's horrible koopa magic.

Had he paid closer attention, Kamek would have known the identities of at least two more. Mario and Luigi scraped with death many times, though they themselves didn't know it, any outsider would have. The same was true, incidentally of Donkey Kong and Wario bragged constantly about being immortal, writing it in his journal in big capital letters and also on city walls.

How much of this great power was the star's and how much was Bowser's was hard to say. Bowser Jr. was undisciplined, untrained. A mere amateur in the villain business. But tonight he would take his bride to be for the first time, as his father had several years ago.

Tiny wasn't sure what had hit her, she'd barely fallen asleep as soon as the bag was over her head and quickly her whole body. She let out a screech that had no linguistic value, but meant everything to other apes. It said, "Help, I'm under attack by what I think is a cat or sufficiently large crocodile. Make a spear out of a stick and jab it in the eyes until it lets go and dies somewhere." A squadron of Squawks and Quawks followed the ships as they retreated, but the wormholes opened up, and most turned back, others found themselves in a terribly inhospitable part of the world.

"So," asked Wendy O. of her pilot, a Lakitu who had a name she didn't know, "They gonna get us all together for the seven castles thing or are we doing a bigger version of a normal enemy thing or both?"

"Huh? Sorry ma'am, hey haven't said," the pilot replied.

"Whatevah, I'm just gonna stay in the big castle then. Can't go back to New Donk City, they'll have me locked up till this is ovah."

"I'm sure Junior will enjoy the company."

"Company? He needs to spend it with his dame, else what's the point? Where is she anyway?"

"She's in the brig, if you want to see her you can."

Tiny paced in her cell. The walls were made of logs and the bars were iron, just iron. Black, untreated, not steel iron. Iron that she could probably break out of with chemicals or even just force, once she decided on what she wanted to do. When the large jingling koopa walked in, she realized she'd have to table the thought.

"Let me out of here!" Tiny demanded.

"You know I can't do that. Say, you're cute. Have we met before?"

"I'm not talking to you."

"Right, I know you were on the Donkey Kongs at that Baseball game! I heard you guys won, good job. You could model, no wonder Bowser Jr. wants you to be his girlfriend."

Tiny Kong stopped, "Could you repeat that again."

"Yeah, it's just a thing the Bowsers do, they go and kidnap the women they fall in love with. They're not very smart. He's like twelve or something but he's got a huge crush on you."

Tiny sat down. "He was that guy who threw me that ball so Mario didn't get a homerun. He must have been sitting there so he could watch me. Place was empty basically he could have sat anywhere."

Wendy opened the cell and took a seat adjacent, "After we lost to Wario, Bowser wanted to go home right then and there but, well, Junior wanted to see you again. He's a little weird but you should talk to him, I bet he'd like that, just don't be mean to him, his dad's the dumbest romantic on the planet."

"I can understand." Tiny said, "Diddy does everything Donkey Kong does. Everyone decides to have a party, and Diddy gets trapped in a barrel by the kremlings and our entire food supply gets stolen. Goes everywhere DK goes, drives my sis crazy because she likes it most when it's him and her. Know something else though? DK just does whatever his grandad tells him to do."

"His grandad should tell DK to spend more time with ya sis."

"I dunno that's kinda weird, DK's got a girlfriend and that's a huge age gap. By the way, you sound really familiar, where do you live."

"New Donk City, sugah, I've got a job modelling at Beautiful Bear's. They've got a big interspecies catalog, you should send them your shots.

The cage in Bowser Jr.'s castle was much less complex. It was steel, yes, but the key hole was so large one could fit several fingers in with room to move them around. At her first convenience, Tiny did so and then stayed, with the door in the shut position. Partly she didn't want to risk falling in lava. Koopas loved lava for one reason or another, and the royal koopa family filled all their castles and outposts and fortresses with the stuff. How they kept the rock liquid was another matter Tiny wasn't certain of. It made more sense at home where the active volcano under Gorilla Glacier would erupt once every few years because of geological processes and Donkey Kong Island chain being on top of a hot spot in the mantle for eons before there were people or apes, and the very reason there was a a Donkey Kong Island chain. Koopa lava was magic, apparently. It didn't cool off, you couldn't stand on it, everything you threw on it sunk, which was maddening. When Tiny was a little girl she remembered the first time DK Mountain erupted, melting part of the glacier, her father took her to one of the lava streams, where it was fairly safe to be. She threw a banana on it, the banana floated, hissed, and caught fire when all the water was out of it. She had a banana in a food bowl, when she threw it out, it fell straight through the lava which parted like water and bobbed up like water before relaxing. It wasn't hot either, not really. Sure pieces of brimstone occasionally rose and there was steam coming off of it, but for the lava to be as orange and bright as it was, the room would have to have been thousands of degrees. It wasn't. She wasn't more than a few meters above it all and it felt like a summer day in the jungle.

"I could have shrunk and got through the cage. Why didn't I do that?"

"Probably because you couldn't resist me." Bowser Jr.'s shadow trailed in through the huge dungeon doors. The effect would have been pretty impressive to anyone who was easily manipulated by fear or visual effects or perspective or bad one liners.

"Oh dear," she thought. "He's using charisma he borrowed from his dad. You borrow a car from your dad, or money, or a... those thing you put on bananas, but not your pick up lines..." Then she spoke, "You horrible fiend, release me!"

"Once you've agreed to be my bride!"

"Wow you really did get all your advice from your dad didn't you?"

"Huh?"

"You're Bowser Jr. right? I remember you from the game. Thanks for the help by the way, couldn't have done it without you. You made Cranky really happy."

"Heh, it was nothing..." Bowser Jr. began to blush.

"Those Koopalings of yours are some pretty smart guys, real salt of the earth people you know? Listen, I'm not going to marry you, because I'm still pretty much a kid, so are you. But let's talk okay?"

"That was when they were both 6." Bowser Jr. said.

"Sounds like your dad's real hung up on this Peach lady."

"Well he must not be too hung up right? At some point he liked someone well enough to have me."

Tiny nodded, "Before I was born my mom got divorced from her first husband and remarried. My sister Dixie was still just an infant at the time so she didn't really remember anything about it but we were still sisters all the same. Dixie's three years older than me, and I'm already twice as big as her, because my dad's a different kinda ape than her dad. But you know mom never really said much about either of our dads. Because it turned out she didn't really like either of them that much. She didn't like anyone all that much.

Junior laughed, "My dad doesn't like anyone that much."

"You and Peach aside, he seems to like Mario quite a lot."

"Excuse you?"

"Well, Mario's always inviting him to play golf or to go-kart. Bowser doesn't have to go. If he hated Mario he wouldn't. Maybe he doesn't like Mario, but it's quite likely he has a more complex relationship with him. I wouldn't recommend talking to him about it though, you've got to let him figure out his own problems but I'll tell you this, I know Mario likes him, and wants your dad to be his friend. There's always help if he's willing to take it."

"When did you get so good at this relationship stuff?"

"The jungle is filled with Type A personalities. Cranky wants to tell everyone what to do, Donkey wants to tell everyone what to do, Diddy wants to tell everyone what to do, sis wants to tell everyone what to do, then some of us just look and try and figure out what they really want."

"Listen, I feel really bad asking this, but Iggy and Lemmy said I should be honest, would you go on a date with me?"

"Yeah, Junior, I'd love to. You're overreact a little but you come by it honest, and you're sweet, so yeah, let's go. Have a place in mind?"

"No, Miyamoto doesn't let the game's developers do a lot of world building so there aren't a whole lot of neat little background elements people can pick through and use, because the man's old and doesn't understand that story elements aren't a detriment to gameplay."

"God I hope he retires soon."

"Yeah, me too. I mean I loved Pikmin, but Jesus Christ stop telling Aonuma how to do his job, he's the same age as you and he's been there since the beginning. I think he knows how to make a Zelda game by now."

The sun set over the distant Ricco Hills. They could have eaten more if they tried, but wisely chose to not. Surely someone somewhere would offer desert and they would try that, and that would be the thing to push them over the edge. In the shades of the dark one could easily mistake their shadows for that of a mother and her very fat, very ugly child, but what it was was the beginnings of something, possibly, perhaps resembling love, both were still too young to tell, but they'd feel around, literally, figuratively, and see how things went.

"You know, all things considered, I really had a nice time," Tiny said to her tinier partner.

Bowser Jr.'s tiny beady eyes lit up, figuratively because they certainly didn't do it literally, "Yeah! I'm glad to hear it so can we do it again sometime?"

"Yes but, I'd prefer it if you called on my bananaphone first," she bent down and gave him a big kiss on his large nose, not because she was prudish, but because it seemed like a good place to start and she wasn't exactly sure how the logistics of kissing his mouth would work out. Not that she was one to talk, her lips were almost as big as his. Whatever came of the relationship, Tiny was sure biological science would learn a lot. On the other hand, geology hadn't learned anything from the koopa's cold magic lava, so maybe not.

Suddenly on both their faces, a look of realization, "We forgot to tell anyone where we were."

Mario and Donkey Kong began to pace the boss room nervously. No one had appeared. There wasn't some trigger they had missed and no amount of effort would open the door to the room they'd come from. Suddenly like lightning from the sky, they fell out of the castle and into nothingness

TIME UP

Elsewhere in Starborn Valley, the great shaman Merlon was paid a visit by three visitors most foul. When they entered the house of Merlon the rooms darkened with their presence.

"Begone fowl witches, you shall not darken my door."

"I'll think you'll find, Merlon" said the oldest and the ugliest, "I already have. Ashley, Sarissa, let's show this wretch what we three wench witches can do!

"Yes Grandma Sabaasa!"


End file.
